


because your heart belongs in the air

by blanchtt



Category: Incredibles (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Historical Accuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: There is exactly one other woman in their meetings. Helen's worked at Deavor Aeronautics for two months before she actually sees her in action.





	because your heart belongs in the air

**Author's Note:**

> Working my way through a bit of a block and decided to try a new fandom and a new ship (and tweaked the canon timeline a little bit to fit the story).
> 
> I have loved The Incredibles since I first saw the first movie like what fifteen years ago? And I was planning on seeing the second one on opening night but had to cancel my plans because I ended up in the hospital, which was really just the culmination of five years of miserable health. 
> 
> I've been trying to find something that interests me enough to write about, so it was really nice in several ways to finally be able to watch The Incredibles 2 a year later, in good health, life totally changed, and find some inspiration again.

_1959_

The answer isn’t a surprise. She’s been dealing with _no_ her entire life. 

(And, possibly, it hadn't been her best interview. After the normal questions about required sweep and circle on the approach plate and everything else meant to trip her up but that she'd answered thoroughly, the questions from the retired captain in the slick suit had veered into the vastly more irritating— _are you married_ and _w _ho’s_ going to watch the kids while you’re at work _and a _re you capable of getting along with the men in the office?_ )

(In retrospect, she hadn't even been expecting to be called back at all given that she'd replied _and who’s going to watch the kids while you’re at work?_ )

“We can’t offer you a position as a pilot, _but!_ ” the woman’s voice at the other end of the line adds on quickly and cheerfully, as if she can see the determined cant of Helen’s mouth from through the phone, can sense that this conversation isn't going to end as easily as she’d wish it would. “Mr. Deavor came across your resume and he’s quite impressed. Would you be able to come in this Thursday to meet with him?”

-

_She’s seventeen, war barely over, and deciding what to do with her life._

_There are many things, things in her control and things far out of them, that press for an answer—the war and everything it means and will mean, the countryside she’s grown up in and worked on, the need to find someone else who knows what it’s like to stretch just a little bit further, jump a little higher._

_But for now the sun’s starting to slant outside her window, nearing afternoon, and Helen raises her hand and glances at her watch on her wrist, reaches out and grabs a bookmark to place between the pages of the autobiography of Amelia Earhart, and wonders as she gets up and slips on her sneakers not for the first time what it’s like to fly over an ocean that big._

_-_

She meets Winston Deavor, finds he takes a shine to her almost more than she takes a shine to him, and once the ink dries on the paperwork she walks into the big fancy steel and glass Deavor Aeronautics building downtown the following Monday, lets the HR lady who called her previously meet her in the lobby, take her up in the elevator, and show her to her cubicle.

( _Karen_ , she introduces herself excitedly before asking her questions about flying as they walk, and Helen decides she's not so bad after all.)

On the floor she’s introduced to people here and there, hand held out to shake to too many men and a few secretaries to remember, everyone always curious about a new face, and meets Jack and Henry and Douglas in the cubicles next to her—aeronautical engineers, too, the team she’ll be working with. 

It’s not flying, but it’s the closest she can come to it, at least without being stuck in a short skirt and tight blouse as a flight attendant on a sub-par airline. The last thing she wants after all the time, the sweat, and the tears she’s put into her career is to be treated like a secretary, and so as the welcoming party disperses Helen settles down to work as Jack hands her a schematic, rolls it out on her desk and picks up a drafting pencil. 

-

She fought hard for her engineering degree, her flight log filled to the brim with hours in the air, has managed to combine it into an erstwhile career worth as much as she can—from mechanic to radio operator to private pilot to engineer. There are a few men that respect that, but a seemingly overwhelming amount that don’t, apart from Mr. Deavor.

(Around the water cooler the men talk about Typhoons and Kingfishers and the battle of El Mansoura and Black Friday, and Helen knows about it all but can’t find it in herself to bother to join the conversation. It’s the first time in her life the topic of aviation has ever bored her.)

There is exactly one other woman in their meetings. She’s worked at Deavor Aeronautics—DevAer, as she's heard it referred to around the office—for two months before she actually sees her in action.

It’s another meeting about their latest project they’re hoping to put out by the end of the year, and Helen sits at attention, hands clasped over the notebook she’s got in front of her in case she needs to write down something useful. But the other woman is decidedly _not_ watching Henry talk about the active air control system, with posture so relaxed and still and eyes so hooded she looks almost asleep. In fact, Helen expects the woman's head to tilt in sleep back any second. 

But the other woman’s questions, when she does speak up, belie her lazy look and puncture Henry’s plans (and likely ego, too) like a balloon, and the short-haired woman doesn’t stop until the wind’s all seeped out of him, Henry struggling and spluttering to answer her surprisingly technical questions. And Helen watches, bites back a grin and can’t find it in herself to step in and defend her team member when the questions the other woman is asking are _right_. 

The woman only seems to give up when bored or, simultaneously, when Mr. Deavor clears his throat gently, stands and calls a stop to the meeting with his usual boundless and optimistic energy.

“Alright! Let’s take five, regroup, and come up with a new plan after lunch, huh?” he offers loudly and positively with a smile, and no one eager to be the woman’s new target objects as Mr. Deavor turns to a defeated Henry, claps him on the back in consolation. His praise is lost in the shuffle and chatter of people standing, leaving as Henry gathers up his schematics. “Nice try, Henry! Keep at it!”

“‘Nice try?’ Winston, that was terrible and you know it,” Helen hears the other woman say once almost everyone has filed out of the room. The woman gets up fluidly from her seat, and Helen realizes she's the only one left, other than the woman and Mr. Deavor. She stands quickly but hopefully unobtrusively, gathers her things, sticks sticks her pen between the sheets of her notebook and slips it under her arm. She almost makes it to the door before the woman lets a shoulder drop, turns easily, and that sleepy gaze is turned, purposefully or not, on her.

Karma for laughing at Henry, probably.

“Helen, is it?” The woman says suddenly, somehow, ignores Mr. Deavor now at her back and holds out a hand, and Helen stops short, lets Mr. Deavor huff at the interruption but slip by them both with a cheerful wave goodbye to her. “Evelyn,” the woman says brightly, redirecting the attention back to herself. “A pleasure.”

“Likewise,” Helen says, formulaic, expects nothing to come of it other than an introduction unlike any other one she’s been part of at DevAer thus far, except that Evelyn squeezes her hand, looks around, spiky bangs flopping over her eyes as she turns back and leans in conspiratorially before letting go.

“So, Henry’s idea’s a wreck,” Evelyn says, leaning heavily against the back of the boardroom chair and resting her hand on her cocked hip, and Helen can’t stop the smile from spreading across her lips. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

“Not at all,” Helen agrees easily. And to be honest, she’s more than a little impressed that someone that’s not in the engineering inner circle has caught onto it and asks, “What team are you again?” 

“I’m heading the design team,” Evelyn replies, and that makes sense implicitly—she strikes Helen as just as ruthlessly artistic as Edna, with her easy confidence and sharp clothes and avant-garde haircut. Out of all the few women in the office, Evelyn's the only one she's seen wear pants, loose button-ups, flats. “And you’re?”

“Engineering,” Helen confirms.

Evelyn hums, looks away like she’s thinking again, and finally says, “If you’ve got time, I think I have something we can collaborate on.” She adds the rest in a conspiratorially low voice, amused. “Can’t let the boys suggest all the _brilliant_ ideas, can we?”

It’s said with a smirk that calls to that small but competitive part of her deep inside, and Helen has to think about the offer for all of a heartbeat before deciding. It’s not that she’s been made explicitly unwelcome. The men are good guys. But they’ve already left the meeting room and Helen knows for a fact that they’ve got their own groups for lunch, because as nice as they are during business hours she’s sat at her desk alone for lunch the entire week. 

“Damn straight,” Helen agrees. And maybe Evelyn meant _later today_ or _next Tuesday_ or something else. But it’s hardly a risk, is it, when Evelyn smiles at her like that? Helen motions towards the door and asks, “Are you heading out? Maybe we can go over the plans over lunch.” 

“I like your style,” Evelyn says jauntily, adds a little bow with a flourish and waits for Helen to move first. “After you.”

-

_The Pacific is vast and unforgiving, as many voyagers and historians and lately bright young men have made it known, and no one knows what really happened to her. Ran out of fuel and crashed or taken prisoner by the Japanese, mostly likely. Maybe, just based on that, Amelia’s not the best example to look up to. But Helen can’t help it, just like she can’t help the fact that she’s the only one in her family that she knows of that’s a little different._

_There’s no one else home just yet, and so she lopes down the stairs loose-limbed, without a care to the loud and unladylike thumps of her sneakers on the stairs, slips out the front door, and lets the screen bang shut on her way out and down the steps of the veranda._

_(It’s not a big house or a particularly new one, but it’s theirs, clean and white, with a few fields themselves out back and old oak on the side, one she used to climb when she was six like it was nothing and jump off of for the fun of it, parachuting at the last second until her mother saw and put an end to that.)_

_There are trees shading the road just around their house, at least until the fields start a few yard away, and then they peter out, cleared away for Georgia agriculture, and then she’s walking out in heat and sunshine, dust kicked up by her steps sticking to her no longer quite white sneakers and the rolled up cuffs of her denim jeans._

_-_

The only downside to the city is that there is no way to fly.

She works for DevAer, sure. But it’s not the same as having the yoke of a plane in her hands, of gripping it and feeling the angle and bank of plane change under her direction. She misses the sound of the engine and throttle so loud it hums in her chest, threatening to outbeat her heart, the feeling of take-off when lift’s achieved, when the wheels finally leave the ground and the wind catches the wings of the plane and the bottom of her stomach drops out.

But she’s not seventeen anymore, dusting crops on neighboring farms back in Georgia to book hours in her log, young and with so many choices laid out in front of her, and this is as good as it gets. She's come to realize it long ago and understands that with only the smallest amounts of resignation.

(It seems like a lifetime ago that there was pride in her parents’ eyes when she completed her engineering degree, years ago, but even more so when she announced her and Robert’s engagement, and that was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it?)

She wakes up and readies herself and catches the hover-rail downtown, as she usually does, walks into work a little early before too many people are there and takes the elevator all the way up to the top floor, or at least as far up as her passcard will let her go. Winston, as Evelyn cheekily calls her brother and co-CEO Mr. Deaver in front of others, occupies the last couple of floors, Helen guesses.

She slips by a window in someone else’s cubicle, leans against the low wall and watches the sun rise over the edge of the ocean and light spill soft over New Urbem with a mug of hot tea in her hand. 

(She had said yes, young and naive at twenty-one back in forty-eight and just finishing up college, but only one of those two things lasted for more than a year, and it hadn’t been the marriage.)

It’s not the same as flying, but it’s good enough. 

-

_The possibilities jostle for importance in her mind as she walks, demanding an answer or at least consideration like they do lately when she’s not thinking of something else. The fields in their part of the state are peanuts, mostly, and it’s green as far as the eye can see, strips of brown just barely visible between rows. It’s a familiar sight and a familiar road, one she’s grown up with since childhood, and Helen closes her eyes, the way familiar enough to walk blindfolded._

_She can go to college now, like she knows her best friend’s older sister did. She’d worked on applications at the end of the school year, bought envelopes and stamps on the sly and sent them away on her own_ — _University of Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina. She’s almost certain it’s what she wants, and it far outweighs her other two choices_ — _to get a nice, respectable (boring) job as a secretary like her mother’s suggested or, worse, get married, like her father and Robert want her to._

_None of the possibilities involves flying, at least not right away, if ever, and eyes still closed Helen holds out her arms, walks a little slower and imagines the warm breeze might flow under them, lift her up, that she’s really thirty thousand feet up and she’s left it all down below._

_(Would it be possible, even, if she flattened herself enough, didn't care who saw?)_

_Eventually, though, there’s only so long she can daydream until she’s late, and she opens her eyes, walks a little quicker with a spring in her step because this is what she wants to do, no doubt about it. She reaches Wade Davis’ farm, dust on her jeans and hair tucked back behind her ears, and reaches up with a hand and waves to him hoeing at the edge of the field with the ‘help,’ the gangly thirteen year old twin boys from the farm over._

_Not the ideal help, either of them, but as old and oftentimes irritable as Wade is Helen finds he’s not so hard to talk to, at least since there’s no one else left to help him out and he used to fly himself, back in the Great War. What other option is there, anyway, than to dust the crops himself at seventy-something or to let her help out._

_-_

Late nights mean the lights down low, a record playing, glasses of Evelyn’s whiskey and design schematics rolled out on desks (for her), on the floor (for Evelyn), tacked up on the walls, covering every available surface. 

Helen sits back in Evelyn's fancy chair, takes a break and watches Evelyn sitting in the middle of the floor draw the fuselage of a jet with smooth, wide lines, all sleek designs that fit right into the aesthetic of New Urbem as if she had had a hand in designing it herself. 

“Will the tensile strength hold?”

It’s followed by a noise, not quite a laugh but air breathed out a little harder than usual that holds a tinge of amusement as Evelyn shifts the drawing board and paper in her lap before looking up at her with a lazy smile. 

“Of course,” Evelyn says confidently, brow raised.

And Helen believes her, to the point of betting her life on it. She’s learned over the past month that Evelyn is part of design because that’s what she enjoys best, just like Winston acts as the mouthpiece of DevAer. But neither of the two lack knowledge about any other part of the business—which makes sense, to succeed in a city like New Urbem, at the very forefront of the entire country. Evelyn understands engineering almost as much as she does.

Helen turns away, back to her own work, and wonders, not for the first time, how this has come about so easily when nothing else has in her life other than flying. The more she gets to know Evelyn the more she wonders how she’s never felt this for any other job—an eagerness to wake up, to walk into a building that stands for something, to share her ideas with someone else eager to hear them and work on them and produce something useful and efficient and beautiful.

(A large part of it is probably Evelyn herself, Helen's come to realize, and Winston and Karen too, and everyone else who sees her as an engineer first and foremost.)

An hour or so passes, trading ideas back and forth offhandedly while working on their own designs before Evelyn puts aside her board and pencil, stands and holds the schematic up and open with both hands.

“ _Voila_ ,” Evelyn says, something that should be said with a flourish but that is said in her usual deadpan, and Helen sees it’s a smallish jet, made for a few passengers at most, but mostly remarkably with a yacht at the bottom of the design. She almost wonders if Evelyn’s run out paper and refused to get more, scribbled two things on one schematic, but that’s unlike her and, as the wheels turn in her head, it takes Helen only a few seconds longer to realize they’re _meant_ to go together, that Evelyn’s designed them to because of course she has. Evelyn doesn’t make mistakes. 

“How can that possibly take off?” Helen asks with a healthy dose of skepticism, pre-flight checklist running through her mind, and Evelyn quirks a brow like she’d been waiting for her to ask just that.

“It’s a little project I’ve been working on,” Evelyn says. “Light composite materials to reduce weight and increase maneuverability. They’re designed to absorb vibration, which decrease the sound produced—just a bonus for the pilot, the passengers, the people on the ground." Evelyn's hair bounces as she holds up the schematic with one hand, points out different parts she explains with the other. "These materials are very light weight. Then there’s gyros stabilization technology which keeps it flying or hovering very smoothly, whichever you’d prefer. The inertial measurement unit works by detecting the current rate of acceleration using one or more accelerometers and detects changes in rotational attributes like pitch, roll and yaw using one or more gyroscopes. I’m considering adding a magnetometer to assist with calibration against orientation drift.”

She should really know better than to be surprise by Evelyn by now, but _still_. 

“You fly?” Helen asks, because she’s never met someone who knows that much who doesn’t, Evelyn rising another notch in her already high estimation. But Evelyn shakes her head, finally takes the schematics and rolls it back up.

“Nah. Just know enough of the jargon to get the job,” Evelyn says, reaching for a rubber band and slipping it over the schematics. They’re put aside on a shelf, and she takes her glass from off the floor, heads to the liquor cabinet. “Plus, I'm related to the boss.” It’s added with a slow, sly wink as she gets out the bottle of Greenore, pours herself a few more fingers. “The only flying I do is on my bike.”

Curiosity has always been tempered with a healthy dose of self-preservation. She’s not going to fly without a pre-flight or an exit plan, not going to scale a tree or a building without checking it out and coming up with a back-up, not going to stretch and push herself without knowing no one’s going to see or there’s no excuse she can give them.

But this, strangely, feels nothing like being under-prepared.

“You ride?” Helen asks, surprised for the second time tonight, and Evelyn raises a brow.

“ _You_ ride?” Evelyn asks back. Helen's not sure Evelyn can be surprised, and she certainly doesn’t sound like it—only intrigued as she takes a drink, leans against the cabinet, loose top slipping around her shoulders, and asks airily, “What _don’t_ you do, Miss Parr?”

Something sticks in her chest, just under her heart, a witty repartee that seems like it’s pushing something she shouldn't. And so Helen only smiles, looks back down at her work.

“Sometimes.”

-

_The Stearman’s there on the dirt road already, rolled out of the barn-cum-hanger, an old war-surplus fixed-wing biplane that’s no longer bright yellow and that’s seen better days but that gets the job down._

_She does her pre-flight like she’s read about, like Wade showed her how to back when she first started, makes sure the Stearman’s in good shape—a walk around to check there aren’t any control locks left or dings in the metal, that the fuel tank’s full and the oil’s checked, the weight’s okay._

_Helen clambers up into the cockpit, settles into the seat and back against it with the yoke between her legs and her feet on the pedals, and she’s infinitely glad for her jeans and sneakers, courtesy of raiding her older brother’s untouched closet even though she needs a belt to keep them up. She reaches down to the goggles she’s left on the floor from last time, picks them up and slips them over her head and down over her eyes before reaching for the key to the ignition. There’s no tower to notify, but she checks the road one last time, still sees Wade with the kids off in the distance and knows it’s okay._

_The Stearman comes to life with a kick that jostles, with the roar of the engine followed by the hum of the propeller, and Helen can’t help but grin, keeps a foot on the right rudder to stay centered on the runway and advances the throttle and it’s moving as she bears down on the yoke and starts to taxi down the road._

_She checks the crosswind, the speed and lift, has the throttle full on, and college and family and Robert all fall away as she starts to pick up serious speed, flirts will-it-or-won’t-it with gravity as the Stearman bumps down the road, noise deafening. And then finally, toward the end of the makeshift runway, road disappearing under her, she pulls back hard on the yoke and, with that familiar swoop in her stomach, feels the Stearman get airborne._

_She keeps an eye on the attitude indicator and the altimeter, controls the bank angle, takes the duster out over the crops and flies over green fields that now look much smaller, quieter, even over the roar of machinery, Wade and the boys tiny down there somewhere._

_It’s quiet, sunny, calm, and there’s focus and purpose in what she does, and Helen lets herself take the plane around for a ride, just for a minute, before getting to work._

-

It’s only another late night later that she realizes that somehow, under a calm exterior, Evelyn too hides a need for speed. Something about still water running deep (and fast) is probably applicable.

It’s nearly eleven and high time to leave, plans sketched and discussed and a presentation prepared to a tee for tomorrow in the boardroom, and leaving the building behind Helen pauses in the parking lot and watches Evelyn kick the stand of her motorcycle back, hands gripping handles and watching her.

“It’ll be quicker than the hover-rail,” Evelyn proposes, and it’s true, at least past rush hours when the trains cycles by the station at longer and longer intervals before eventually past midnight. 

“Alright.”

And so Helen places a hand on Evelyn’s shoulder, steadies herself before lifting a leg and sliding it over the passenger seat, settling just behind Evelyn’s thin frame and letting go of her shoulders. It’s a challenge to keep her skirt at a respectable length the closer Helen slides to her, envies Evelyn's slacks and shirt and coat and rests her feet on the passenger foot pegs in her black heels, but thought of modesty go as quickly as they've come, soon lost as Evelyn turns in her seat and hands her a helmet. 

“What about you?” Helen asks as she takes it, notices Evelyn doesn’t put one on herself. She must only have hers and not have planned to give anyone else a ride. But Evelyn only waves a hand dismissively.

“I’ll be fine.”

Her hips are flush against Evelyn’s, the scent of her perfume a little stronger this close, and for some reason Helen ignores her pre-flight, nods her assent and takes the helmet and slips it over her head and into place and slips her arms around Evelyn, nods again as Evelyn asks if she’s ready before they take off.

They race through New Urbem, traffic long gone. Over the road of the motor it’s a muffled sort of quiet with the helmet on, and it does feel like flying, in a way. She clings to Evelyn’s thin waist, the lights from now-empty buildings like streaks in the darkness. It’s a city right up against hills, at certain parts, and Evelyn keeps to the flat parts, moves through the city with a knowledge Helen can’t beat.

(The Deavors have grown up here, Helen knows now, and would never consider leaving.)

They’re making their way toward her apartment, eventually like Evelyn promised, but it’s clear they’re taking the scenic route, and despite the speed Helen lets herself relax, trusts and rearranges her grip as Evelyn picks up speed, arms tight around the other woman’s waist and trying to keep her helmet from bumping up against the back of Evelyn’s head. 

After a few more minutes the neighborhood is recognizable and they’re almost there, and Evelyn says something, _which street is it_ or something like that, tilts her head to the side just a bit with words lost to the wind, and suddenly despite their green light someone in a sleek black car comes around the corner, cuts them off with a roar of their own engine, clipping their front wheel, and the bike veers hard and jerks in a way that Helen feels, in a heartbeat, that Evelyn might not be able to correct as the other car speeds off.

It all happens much faster than accidents in the cockpit can, but she’s got an eye out for danger like she always does and Evelyn has no helmet, and so Helen reaches forward and _up_ , stretches and wraps herself totally around Evelyn as the bike goes tumbling over itself wheel over front, the two of them just clearing the vehicle that crashes and skids to a halt a good deal away from the intersection.

They land as unceremoniously too, the wind knocked hard out of her, and the tension she’s able to hold in her body, to keep herself and Evelyn safe, goes loose, everything hurting, and unable to keep herself together they fall over each other, Helen ending up on her stomach with Evelyn sprawled heavy on top of her. 

It takes her a moment to come back to herself, helmet knocked hard against the road. It’s saved her head, but she’s got a bad case of road rash and probably more than a couple of bone-deep bruising tomorrow to show for it, Helen knows from the ache and sting along her shoulder, spine, her ribs, her right leg, and vaguely she’s aware of Evelyn scrambling off of her, repeating something like _holy shit holy shit holy shit_ over and over.

Helen gasps as she half-pushes herself up off the road, Evelyn supporting her until she can sit back, and then Evelyn’s in front of her, holding the helmet steady with both hands, flipping up the visor and asking if she can hear her, if she’s hurt, if everything’s okay.

“Yeah,” Helen says, merely getting the word out hurting her ribs, and it hardly registers that her secret’s out until Evelyn, slightly pacified, sits back too, sighs, looking more shaken than Helen’s used to seeing her.

“Holy shit,” Evelyn says again, but with a different type of surprise. “You’re a Super.”

Her perspicacity is lacking tonight, but after a tumble like that Helen excuses herself for mumbling again. They need to get off the street, she realizes at the same time, knows she doesn’t want a good Samaritan to see them and stop and start asking how they survived with a rider almost unscathed and a helmeted passenger banged up as much as she is.

“Yeah,” Helen admits, and the same thoughts about keeping everything moving must strike Evelyn, too. Evelyn’s arm wraps around her waist, pulls up gingerly and works with her, and once on her feet Helen lets herself lean on Evelyn's shoulder, slips her own arm around her waist and holds tight. 

“You’re full of surprises, Helen.”

-

_There are the other versions of herself, the ones that live on only in the minds of others, that Helen knows of. Not intimately, but they surely exist and she is well acquainted with how little she matches up to them._

_There is the proper young Southern belle her father still wants her to be despite her short-lived marriage and subsequent divorce, despite her age, despite her inability to keep quiet. There are its own burdens to come from a good old name and a good old family, the pressure as heavy and enveloping and persistent as the southern humidity._

_Her mother she’s much less sure of, but she’d never complained about catching her with sneakers on under her dress or the model planes collecting dust on her dresser when she was younger, and so Helen likes to think that her silence is a supportive one, a blank space to fill in with what she needs, like the silence of her brother shot down over the Ardennes._

_But now she’s thirty-two and restless, which should really come as a surprise to no one._

_The countryside feels smaller and older, and the aging dusters with them. The social circles have gotten tighter and further apart, friends married and too busy with husbands and children. And sometimes she wonders if she can still do it, in the safety of her own small, rented home, late in the evening, stretches an arm or a leg just to make sure she even remembers how to._

_-_

Their marriage of design and function work better than anything the engineering team can put out on their own. Her work speaks for itself now, and the men that asked her to get them coffee when she’d come into the boardroom now watch and listen to _her_ and Evelyn as they present their idea on the DEV1 prototype.

Her coworkers drop the niceties, no longer _Miss Parr_ but _Helen_ , like any of the other boys, and she gets workloads dumped on her desk like them too. And she’s sitting at her desk over lunch once again when Winston strides over, stops with his hands clasped on the walls of her cubicle.

“Helen! I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes. Join us?”

“What am I offering?” she asks, and as usual Evelyn’s not far behind her brother, spiky-haired head nodding hello to her.

“Your professional opinion,” Evelyn cuts in, and presses up bodily against the other side of the cubicle walls, Helen guesses from the way her arms hang over the top of it, just brushing some of the schematics she's got pinned up on the inside. "I'm coming, too. Same reason. Well, and since I hold half the shares."

“I’m meeting with a few investors,” Winston explains, ignores his sister's grin and tents his fingers, and Helen blinks in surprise, focuses on him as Evelyn starts to play with a pencil she picks up, flicking it slowly between her fingers.

“I’m flattered, but I don’t know anything about business,” Helen admits. She's not one to question her own credentials, but this seems like something out of her league. She's never been interested in numbers beyond using them to fly.

“Don’t worry. That’s what I’m for,” Winston says with a smile, reassuring with a wave of his hands now. “You don’t even have to say anything. I just want to hear if you think their science is sound.”

“All you have to do is nod if what they’re offering’s a solid product,” Evelyn explains, adds in a wink, and Helen puts it all together quickly, lets out an _ah_ and stands to join them.

_-_

_And so what else is she supposed to do, she asks when everyone from her parents to her aunts and uncles and cousins to her friends that ask her, with a degree other than use it? She packs her things, says goodbye to the old Piper Apache at the county airport, and moves across the country, settles in New Urbem because that’s where everything up-and-coming is._

_(She’s seen the tilt of the head from everyone and anyone when she mentions the city—the slight roll of the eyes, the way the city’s name isspoken._ Oh _. New Urbem.)_

_(But innovation calls to her, because as much as she loves flying she can’t dust crops and radio tower for other pilots for a living.)_

_On the day she leaves she hugs her father goodbye, kisses her mother's cheek, and sets out for California._

-

There comes clout with being part of not only DevAer but the Deavor social circle, too. Based on the meeting and her and Evelyn's opinions there are discussions and bargaining, an eventual buy-out, and a black-tie party hosted by DevAer at one of Winston’s many beautiful homes to celebrate the acquisition.

Helen puts her glass down on a low wall out on the balcony, the lingering scent of cigarettes her only company once the smokers head back inside. This part of the mansion faces the other way, out toward the hills of New Urbem, not the sparkling downtown itself like the other side does, where everyone else is crowded. But it suits her for the moment, to take a few minutes for herself.

(She wonders, sometimes, how many of them are out there, tries to find them amongst the crowd, especially in a city as big and modern and welcoming as this one. There must be more of them, aren’t there? It’s sheer statistics, and hope most days, too.)

(She thinks, one day, that maybe she should mention something to Karen—Karen with her short-bobbed hair and wide eyes and infinite questions, who never misses an opportunity to say good morning with a smile when Helen walks into the building.)

It’s quiet out and the lighting moody, balcony just illuminated only by the lights from inside, spilling out through bright glass walls, all of it made better a few moments later only by Evelyn’s company. The other woman peers out through the back door, seems to see her as if she were searching, and walks towards her.

“Hey there, stranger,” Evelyn drawls, holding a glass out to her, and Helen accepts the new drink with gratitude, raises it to her lips and takes a sip. “I was wondering where you ran off to.”

“Just needed a break,” she says as Evelyn leans against the balcony next to her, takes a sip of her own strong whiskey.

“Don’t we all.”

Helen laughs quietly, knows Winston’s in the thick of it all inside somewhere. It’s a talent all of its own, to be able to entertain and charm that many people while being a decent person yourself, taking that attention and funneling it into something bigger and better than yourself.

“You two are like night and day,” she says, something she'd seen from day one but that's grown to a fuller, deeper understand, and Evelyn agrees with a hum.

“In a way. Happens sometimes, in the best of relationships.” 

Helen agrees with a hum, takes another sip of her drink and reaches to her left to place it on the edge of the balcony before turning to Evelyn. Evelyn’s dress is modern, black and white paired with boots, and it strikes Helen that she’s never seen her in a dress before. Evelyn’s much too slick and independent to be browbeaten into wearing one for a fancy occasion, and so clearly it was her choice.

(Late nights and motorcycle rides press against her heart, an understanding sweeping over her like a wave picking her up, sweet, light-headed—)

“Fraternal relationships. Filial relationships,” Evelyn continues, and there’s a confident pause before she adds, “Romantic relationships.”

(—and t’s as natural as reaching up a little higher than normal, bending a little more loosely than someone else. Like jumping out of a tree with no one to tell her not to, no need for a parachute)

Her body moves and she finds herself in Evelyn’s personal space, Evelyn not stepping back, the two of them forgotten outside on the balcony while everyone who’s anyone is praising DevAer back inside, and almost before she realizes what she’s doing, lost in Evelyn’s perfume, the feeling of her hip-to-hip, Helen pulls back, opens her eyes—when had she closed them, and why?—and finds her hand has slid up Evelyn’s neck, fingers curled at her nape and just touching the ends of her short, spiky hair. 

“Evelyn,” she says quietly, because she can’t say _sorry_ , hasn’t gotten this far in life by saying sorry unless she means it, _really_ means it. It’s an olive branch, just in case she’s misjudged—misjudged that this is something more than mere friendship, more than mere collegial success, more than a drink too many. 

Evelyn presses close, closes the last few breaths between them, and kisses her. 

She dares, and it’s like flying again.

  
_1963_

The Helen of her family’s imagination—it’s nothing more, at this point, another three years down the line and no closer to their ideal, than fanciful imagination—would be settled by now. A husband, two-point-five children, a home, a car. Her friends have that. She does not, and doesn’t want it.

(She keeps in touch, congratulates them sincerely on another wedding, another baby. But the style now is long and free, but Helen crops her hair, just long enough for it curl just a bit near her ears and stay tucked where it’s supposed to when she’s bowed over her work. )

Too much time flying. Too much time studying. Too much time in pants. She’s heard it all, from the old wive's tales to the semi-scientific, and none of it has nothing to do with any of that, Helen knows now. That distance between that she could never bridge was there for a reason. 

She takes the hover-rail to work, settles at her desk covered in schematics, and drinks her coffee before settling down to work. At five, often later though, she finally puts work away, takes the elevator up to Evelyn’s office and works some more or simply keeps her company until the other woman, too, is done with her plans, her drawings, her thoughts, and then finally allows herself to go home. 

There is a copy of One magazine in her purse to read when she gets home as well as the dog-eared copy of The Feminine Mystique she’s been working through, and they sit on the train, side by side, chat most days or read in silence others. They can’t touch like other couples—an arm around shoulders, hands clasped. But there’s the brush of Evelyn’s hand against hers occasionally, the squeeze of a hand quick and meaningful, and herself nudging Evelyn’s foot, a look.

And then at home, in bed, in the spacious and beautifully designed home they’ve built together, there’s Evelyn kissing her way down her body, slipping between her thighs, holding her close and murmuring against her _honey you were made for the skies._

-

There are things she sacrifices and thinks she gains. As much as she’s saved away a little corner of her heart for the passing thought of a family, of children, of living somewhere with creeping kudzu vines and fragrant magnolia trees, it’s incompatible. But in the end this is what she wants overwhelmingly, Helen knows. 

She sits, finally, in the pilot’s seat of the DEV1 jet, performs a successful takeoff from the Deavors' hydrofoil, banks with an eye on the six-pack meters and climbs higher and higher until she’s in the few scattered clouds in the sky and then above them. The fact that there are people watching below, no doubt clapping and watching in awe, turning to Winston and Evelyn with words of congratulations and offers of business—it all falls away, like it always does.

(Before, alone together for a moment, there's a kiss and the press of their bodies that she hardly has to steal from Evelyn, for good luck.)

(Later, she'll pick up a newspaper, find herself in the news along with Winston and Evelyn, with a headline of her own— _First Female Pilot for Deavor Aeronautics Introduces DEV1 Jet._ )

It’s a cursory flight, meant for show, wide loops a few times, a burst of speed, a barrel roll, and then back to the yacht, meant to show off what DevAer can come up with. All things she could do with her eyes closed, if she wanted to. The landing, of course, will be the most challenging part. 

But they’ve practiced, hours and hours with Evelyn over the headset aiding her, and she’s ready for it, and for now Helen focuses on New Urbem on the horizon, the sparkle of the ocean and the countless little white-crested waves below, knows in her heart that flying might not be all plain sailing but that the fun of it is surely worth the price.


End file.
